Quit Taking It Personally (QTIP) is a concept used in different modalities of therapy. I chose it as the title for my musings because whatever it is, it usually isn't about me.

Saturday, January 15, 2011

None of my business

How liberating it is to accept things are none of my business. Once I was nosy and had to be part of every conversation going on around me. And while I am concerned with what's going on around me, to get aware of the situation with family members and friends, to visit with them, to help them or be helped, most of what happens is none of my business. It's powerful, and it's freeing, maybe I can concentrate on the priority. I think I know what should be done, but maybe I have no idea, and my opinion is worth less than a cup of coffee.

(I am reminded of Godard's Masculin/Feminin, where the brunette, like she's being interviewed, keeps answering the boy's questions with "that's none of your business, " and finally she says, to effect, "because I am none of your business.")

I also remember Mary Poppins telling the children "curiosity killed a cat once," and the preacher in the Long Secret saying to Harriet and Beth Ellen " do you know the perils of undue curiosity?" At the same time, why not be curious, why not ask questions, why not wonder? And yet why?

"Curiouser and curiouser," says Alice. Curious and not curious. Ask and don't ask. Can I hold two thoughts at the same time, ask when appropriate and not appropriate, "What's new? How has life been treating you?" My mother used to ask me a lot of questions and I would say, "Let's not discuss it." She could say it for me before it came out of my mouth.

It may or may not be appropriate. As Pooh said: "One of those, in case it isn't."

My, I am confused this morning, time to find something to do.

Afterthought: There is a Henry James story called "The Tree of Knowledge," about a man going to great lengths to keep something from himself. I think of it from time to time, and it still speaks to me, maybe that's me.